AMERICAN

OPINION

Essay on Character:

LAWRENCE PATTON McDONALD

(19 35-i 983)
he following is based on extensive first -person interviews with Congressman Lawrence Patton MeDonald 's family, fri ends, and congress ional sta ff, and on firsthand interviews by the author with the Georgia Democrat during his nin e years in Congress. Origina lly in tended as an ap pendix to the book, Day of the Cobra, the essay was omitted from th e Th omas Nelson work because of its length . It is presented here on the occasion of the second anniversary of the KAL 007 mid-air mas sacre and offers an assessment of the forces and i nflue nc es tha t -sh aped Con gressman McDonald's chara cter and career. Becau se L a w rence Pa tt on McDonald was the first elected official in American history to be murdered by a foreign power - one he had sp ent his en tire career warning against - he now occupies a unique pl ace in American history. While he is remem bered for his uncompromising opposition to totalitarian Communism , how and why

----he came to hold hi s views can only be grasped by understanding the elements that comprised his character. For character, in the final analysis, is the sum total of what we are, as opposed to what we may believe ourselves to be. On Septe mber 12, 1983, the Atlanta Constitution's Wash ingto n corres pondent Bob Dart chose as the lead paragrap h for his story on the memorial service for Congressman Law re nce McDon ald (D-GA ) t he fact t hat Dr . McDona ld's favorite poem, "If," was read to the nearly 4,000 angr y mourners . Dart called one line, "If you can trust yourself

J effrey St. John is the editor of The New American and the author of Day of the Cobra, an exam ination of the Soviet destruction of Korean Ai rlin es Fligh t 007 . He is a veteran pri nt and broadcast jou rnalistlcomm entator, the aut hor of four other books, and the recipient of two Em mys for hi s work in television.
TH ~~ NEW AMERI CAN / SEPTEMBER 30, 1985

whe n a ll m en dou bt yo u ," hauntingly appropriate . "But t he mourners who assembled at Constitution Hall to honor McDona ld were never among his doubt ers," Mr. Dart wrote. "[His doubters I were liberal s who dismissed his archconservative an d anti-Commun ist views a s a nach ro nis ms from the Cold War . The mourners came as America's conservative phalanx, 3,700 strong , filling th e historic hall on a hot aut umn afternoon to remember one of their own. To this gathering, Larry McDona ld , t he Georgia congressma n who was killed along with 268 other persons on a Korean jetliner, has already become a martyr ." Mr. Da rt did not know that the reading of Kipling's "If' was a commentary on Congress ma n McDonald 's cha racter a nd chi ldhood. From the time he was a small boy growing up in Atlanta, the frame d poem was the sole item th at hun g on t he walls in the bedroom he shared with his older brother , Harold. "No one ever sa id a thing about it ," recalled Dr. Harold McDonald , Jr. "We just grew up looking at it." The mother of the boys, Mrs. Harold McDona ld, Sr. , known as "Callie," recalled that she always loved Kipling's poem and had memorized it. Poor in material possessions but rich in matters of the mind an d spir it, she cut the Kipling
35

poem out of a volume of English verse because there was not much else the family could afford to hang in the boys' bedroom. "You never know what influences people," she sai d. "I hung it in a gold fram e in th e boys' bedroom when th ey were little and just kept it th ere. I guess that was th e beginning of Larry's reading it. But he always loved it. I heard him use part of it during his election campaigns. It always seemed to ha ve mean t a great dea l to him."

Family Roots Born in 1905 in the rural hills ofGala x, Virginia , Callie Patton was one of seven childr en. Her fath er raised apples and cherries and was a general storekeeper at a time when Henry Ford was still thinking about th e Model-T auto. She grew up loving the outdoors and nature of sout hwest Virginia, and she would pass on to her son Larry her love of both nature and literature. Her family moved t o Atl anta from th eir 30-acre rural farm -general st ore environment when she was 12; it was a time when America was about to lose its long isolation from the world and its in-

nocence with entry into World War I. A family cousin , George S. Patton, Jr., was a colonel in that conflict and later , in World War II, would become one of the most famous U.S. ge ne ral field command ers in twentieth-century history. Lawrence Patton McDonald was only 10 years old when General Patton was killed in a motor vehicle accident in Germany in 1945. Thirty years later, when Larry was elected to Congress, he would keep a picture of his distant relative in his Washington office, perh aps as a reminder that in his own lifetime real heroes lived and did gre at things on the stage of hi story. Patton , lik e Larry's other heroes George Washington, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, was a Christian warrior who repr e s ented t he e m b od i me n t of th e authentic American hero : th e man of action and of mind , possessed of eighteen t h- cent ury va lues t hat pl ac ed a premium on loyalty, candor and fidelity to religious principl es that time and circumstances did not make un serviceable. While attending Georgia State College for Women in 1925, Callie Patton majored in home economics. "So I fed the boys well," she recalled.

About that time, her fut ure hu sband, Dr. Harold McDonald , Sr., was ju st out of a Georgia medical school, and specializing in ur ology. He was the son of a hard-work ing and ta lente d Atlanta physician , Dr. Paul McDonald . A stern but highly respected physician known for his integrity and deep dedication to his calling, Dr. Paul "pra cticed medicine until he was 87 years old," his grandson Harold recalled. Dr. Paul came from an age when the code of personal conduct held that morality was the respect you paid to self, and manners the respect you paid to others. And, as his gra ndson noted, "He never took off his coat or vest until he went to bed."

Depression of the '30s Callie Gra ce Patton married Harold McDonald in 1928, a year before the great stock market crash that would plun ge the nation into the depth s of the worst economic depression in its history. In Georgia and Atlan ta, an even deeper sta te of economic distress had persisted from th e tim e of th e surrender of th e South to the North in 1865. "My hu sband got all of $15 a month at

Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., during the September 11,1983, memorial service for Rep. Lawrence P. McDonald, a victim of the KAL 007 massacre. Almost 4,000 of his supporters gathered in anger and grief.

36

THE N EW AMERI CAN / SEPTEM BER 30, 1985

Brothers and Boyhood "He liked Fu Manchu novels," Dr. Harold McDonald said of his brother Larry. "Fu Manchu has for decades been the symbol for a worldwide evil conspiracy against the forces of good. Sherlock Holmes was my favorite because he used a lot of deductive reasoning. "We didn't have any money. We didn't have a car. My father was a pennypincher - we had a nice home, but we cut our own grass and mother did all the cooking. We had no allowance. We planted and harvested our own garden, and even did our own canning. Mother ironed every shirt. We were very middle class." The McDonald boys grew up in the ::J area of Atlanta which would be the be:; ~ ginning of the city's suburbs later in the ~ postwar years. They were without the :Jj distraction of television, but with the ~ ur benefit of radio that stimulated an entire iO ::J generation of young Americans to use z ~ their minds to paint pictures in the imag~ ination. "He was a relatively non-competitive "I would call Larry McDonald a mod- person ," remembered Harold McDonald ern-day Cicero," said Thomas Toles, of his brother. "I liked to play games ; he Kathryn McDonald: "I would have his press aide. "There will never be liked to collect things, nature things. We loved to have had my children have another one like him in our lifetime; lived in the country near woods, so it was the benefit of his (Larry's) influence, he was what novelist Taylor Cald- a trade off; he'd play baseball with me if his fantastic personality and mind." well called in one of her books a 'Pil- I'd go hunting in the woods with him to lar of Iron.' " collect bugs, snakes and other nature with the little fellow." things. Larry always had a fascination Sensitive to the suffering in God's nathe hospital;" Mrs. McDonald would re- with nature, particularly snakes, and be- ture, and born into a family of physicians call, adding that, "they get quite a dif- came quite knowledgeable and expert on who made medicine a way of life, Larry ferent sum now." the subject ." Callie McDonald added that McDonald as a very small boy made up Harold Jr. was born in 1933 and Law- "he also came to know his birds . When his mind, his mother said, that he was rence Patton McDonald was born on he was a Cub Scout he did a bird project, going to be a doctor like his father and April 1, 1935, both Depression babies. drew them to scale and won first prize. grandfather. Harold was going to play baseball professionally until he was 35 But they had the advantage and influ- He had an artistic side." Larry McDonald's love of nature and and then attend medical school. ence of a father and a grandfather who "Larry was a very determined little felwere hard, tough men who took adversity living things was an element of his charas it came and made do with what was acter he inherited from his mother, who low," his mother related of her son, who at hand or could be produced by hard also led him to love literature. Both qual- was nine pounds at birth and big-boned, ities came together when he was seven and grew to stand 6 feet 2 inches tall and work. Dr. Paul McDonald's account books re- years old and in bed with a bout of the weigh over 200 pounds in his maturity. veal that in bad times he accepted chick- measles . His mother recalled reading "But he was a very interesting, happy ens and other items as substitutes for his aloud to him from The Yearling, the 1939 little fellow. When he got something into fee. Dr. Paul had lost a child named Law- Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The story, his mind that he wanted to do, he did it. - renee in childhood, and that lost life was set in the wilderness of the Florida Ev- I guess he got that from his father, who virtually reincarnated when his daugh- erglades , is about a young boy and the was very determined about what he ter-in-law named her second son Law- tender attachment he formed to a year- wanted to do. I'm a much easier-going person." rence. ling deer. . The McDonald boys grew up in the dec"I didn't read ahead," Callie McDonald ades of the Great Depression and World related, "and when I got to where the Cultural and Family Influences In the American South of the 1930s War II when everyonein the world knew little yearling was killed, Larry just who were the good guys and who were burst into tears and cried all night long. and 1940s, close-knit family ties and He was so sensitive and sympathetic "Honor thy Father and Mother" were the bad.
THE NEW AMERICAN I SEPTEMBER 30, 198 5
37

a8

THE NEW AMERICAN I SEPTEMBER so, 1985

taken as social and religious gospel, no matter how authoritarian and rigid such attitudes may appear to today's permissive society. Th e McDonald brothers rarely disobeyed th eir stern father and t he ir more a rtistic, literary-minded mother. But when the y did, she was not hesitant to switch th em. She remembered one instance, with a tra ce of steel in her voice: "I got Harold first , and switched him. He went hopping up and down and out of the house. 1said, all right , Larry, come here , you're next - and switched him. Larry with tears streaming down his face put both hands on my shoulders , and looking me straight in the eye said , 'Mother, I'm not crying because you're whipping me; I'm crying because 1 disobeyed you.' " He was only eight years old. In the years when the boys were growing up, their father was busy with his medical practice , leaving home in th e morning sometimes before they were awake and returning after they had gone to bed. When, however , the family took dinner together , th e discussion at the table took on the atmosphere of a debating society. "Larry learned his debating skills at th e table with our father," Dr. Harold McDonald, Jr. , recalled . "He wasn't the type of parent who discusses issues; he'd be telling you what was. right. You could respond but you never went head to head with Dad. If you won one, he'd claim you were nitpicking. Dad would always bring up an argument and sometimes they were contentious and they didn't always sound friendly. He was tough, but after a while you realized Dad would argue just as st rongly the point you were arguing two weeks before! He was dogmatic, domineering, rarely gracious , and often autocratic-sounding."

Childhood Brush With History Later during his career as a U.S. Congressman from Georgia's 7th District, Larry McDonald would be highly conscious of the importance of history, including contemporary events. He was aware of his own ancestors whom he ....The main body of the KAL 007 memorial, in Seoul, Korea, is composed of 269 pieces of bronze, one piece in honor of each victim. The pedestal has the name ofeach victim engraved on a tablet at the base.
THE NEW AMERI CAN / SEPTEMBER 30, 1985

traced back before the American Revolution and still further back to England and Scotland with th e Donald Clan. But , it was the visits of the president of Texas A&M to th e McDonald household that gave him his first hunger for history, which he would never lose. Mrs. Kathryn McDonald recalled her husb and's fond memories of th at remarkable man 's visits: "He would take Larry on his lap and tell history stories, instead of fairy tal es. He would tell him real stories, of real people, and it fascinated Larry." Accordin g to Larry McDonald's brother , another important influ ence that developed in both of th em an early interest in history and th e world at large was the direct result of visits to their home of Everett Patton, an older brother of their mother. "He was the only person we knew," Harold remembered, "who knew everyt h i ng in the world - h e read the Congressi onal Record eve ry da y and lived in the Philippines before World War II. During th e war, he was chief dent ist on Admiral Chester Nimitz's staff. He was in many ways very similar to Larry because he had thi s incredible talent for retaining a mas sive amount of information and th en reading it back to you in a constant stream." Mrs . Callie McDonald t hinks that what solidified Larry's passion for history was the year he spent at Davidson College in Charlotte , N.C., where he studied under a professor of history who was a classicist. Although the McDonald family was Methodist , both boys were sent to private and parochial schools because, in those days , private schools, and particularly parochial schools, in the South still maintained a remnant ofth e classical educational tradition that put a premium on learning and self-discipline. Larry's mother maintains that her son's deeplyheld religious convictions were initiall y set when he came under the influence of the Grey Nun s and Mari st Fathers at Christ the King Grade School in Atlanta. Later, Larry would attend a non-denominational high school. He finished high school in two year s and pre-medical college in two year s, and entered Emory University Medical School when he was only 17. Dr. Harold McDonald, Jr., insists that this accomplishment was not the product

of a natural brilliance. Rather, according to him, it was the end product of his broth er's serious applicati on to study to the exclusion of almost every oth er activity in his teenage years. "When I starte d to summer school, Larry did too," he recalled. "When he got out of high school, he sta rted to college in June rath er tha n wait until September. He didn't skip any grades; he just went through three summers and was accepted in medical school at age 17. Larry was bright but he wasn't scholarship bright. He j ust went to school and was dead serious about studying. He didn't play football; he wasn't big on dat es; h e wasn't a history buff; he was a serious scholar . What used to really burn Larry up were people whose main aim in life was two beers and television. He couldn't tolerate that. When I was square dancing in college inste ad ofstudying, he disowned me for that."

Medicine Molded Their Minds The McDonald broth ers, from th e time th ey were old enough to comprehend what was going on around them, were exposed to an endless st ream of inte nsively focused discussions about medicine, particularly urology. They were also influenced by a wide variety of people who were the patients of their father and grandfather , the latter a genera l practitioner who maintained an office in his home. "His home office had rockers on th e porch and patients waiting, " Dr. Harold Jr. related. "It was a familiar scene to hear about doctors and medical problems. Frequently, someone was staying at the house on his way to a medical convention and Dad was forever on th e phone talking about medicine, urology. Long before we knew anything about accounting, ta x problems, and literature, it was a familiar scene to hear doctors and medical problems. We in the family took our medicine seriously." A Classic Southerner Dr. Daniel Jordan, for 25 years a friend of Larry McDonald and a fellow Georgian , said after his murd er aboard Korean Airlines Flight 007 on September 1, 1983, that he believed Larry exemplified the classic South erner in though t, values and actions. "His values were cert ainly not humanistic," Dr. Jordan observed. "His expres39

sions and descriptions of life and history were not based on the humanistic view that puts a heavy stress on personal pleasures and pursuits. Rather , th ey were on a much higher level, a belief that man may think he disposes but it is God who disposes . He did have a certain amount of cha uvinism in him when it came to women, that a woman was certainly no equal in performance of duty but that she must be protected and honor ed for the functions and duti es that she can and should perform . . . . "He .exemplified all of my concepts of what I see in the traditional Southerner that go back a hundred yea rs or more," Dr. Jordan went on, "not in th e plantation slave-owner stereotype, but in the code of chivalry , the idea of manners , courteousness , graciousness, and the general code of th e gentleman. Within all this was a fully developed , mature per sonality who took his place and assumed his duties in a society with out being conscious of class." Thomas J efferson 's generation argued for aristocracy based not on birth, but on virtue, tal ent a nd merit. The ranks of the ea rly leaders of the American Republic were filled with men who did not need or want to enter politica l life as the means to establish th eir self-estee m or selfworth , or, as has been too often the case in this century, to obtain public office as a way to assure financial security and in th e process plund er th e commonwealth while pretending to serve it. In the shattered and defeated South after the Civil War , which had lost a whole generation of leaders who took seriously the Code of th e Gentl eman, politics came to attract men who more and more held public office as a care er , rather than as a callin g of one's duty. The genera tions of Dr. Paul McDonald and Dr. Harold McDonald, Sr ., were full of ste rn, principled men and women who watched the politics of their day with disdain, seeing it become the profession of th e unprinc ipled.

Capt. Lawrence P . McDonald (USNR) on active duty as a n urologist at the Bethesd a Naval Hospital, January 1983. His medical training taught him to respect evidence and experience.
"Dad was dead set again st it," observe d Dr. Ha rold McDona ld, J r. "Mother supported Larry. Then afte r Larry won and it looked like he was going to stay there, and it was clear he was running on principle rather than just to be in Congres s, Dad really liked the idea and publicly supporte d him in political efforts from then on. We all were proud that he main tain ed the strong pri nciples that he held to." Atlanta doctors beyond the McDona ld fami ly conservatively estimate that by choosing to serve in Congress , Dr. Lawrence P. McDonald gave up a min imum of $100,000 a year, which he might have ea rne d had he pursued his initial career in medicine. It was during- his last year in medical school in Atlanta (he received his M.D. in 1957) that he decided tojoin the Nava l Reserve , a decision that would cha nge

the course of his caree r and life. In terning as a physician at Bethesda Nava l Hospital , he later took flight surgeon training at the School of Aviat ion Medicine in Pensacola, Florida. Lar ry's marriage to an Icela ndic nationa l who was the dau ghter of a selfmade busine ssman , while he was stationed in Iceland , produced three children: a son, Tryggvi Paul , a n d t wo daughters, Callie Grace and Mary Elizabeth. His marriage foundere d and dissolved in divorce princi pally because of his passionate preoccupation with politics. He believed it was a weapon to fight both the growth of Communism abroad and what he discern ed as the destruc tion of what remain ed of th e American Constituti ona l Republ ic at home. This awa keni ng to danger began , according to Dr. Daniel J ordan, while he was stationed in Reykjavik, Iceland , as a flight surgeon to U.S. naval squadrons and as physician to diplomatic personnel at the Il .S, Embassy. His brother recalls that he had never heard Larry once mention the threat of Communis m prior to going to Iceland. "He went to the commanding officer in Iceland ," observed Dr. Harold McDonald , Jr., "when he thought th e U.S. Embassy appeared to be doing things advantageous to the Communists, who were very influential in the country. He was told somet hing that rang in his ears: 'You don't understand the big picture.' He began to think, 'Maybe I do.' "

Opposit ion to a Political Career It was und erstandable, therefore, that when Larry McDonald announced to his father that he was planning to give up what was clearly a brilliant as well as a financiall y secure medical practice for th e volatile life of elective politics, his father was horrified and adamant in his opposition.
40

Emergence of a Politician "He came back from Iceland afte r discharging his Nava l Reserve act ive duty obligatio ns and began reading political hi st ory a nd book s on forei gn poli cy, sometimes two or three a week," sai d his brother. "He also looked around for anyone else concerned about Communism, a n d t he on ly organi zatio n h e foun d trying to do anyt hing was The J ohn Birch Society. Larry believed in savi ng the country from Communism as st rongly as a missionary to Africa in th e nin eteenth cent ury believed in saving the souls of the people." Two yea rs of residency in general sur gery at Gra dy Memorial Hospital in Atlan t a a n d t hree years of uro log ica l training in surgery at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor were combined wit h a growing, inte nse interest in politics. It was while he was in
T HE NEW AM ERI CAN / SEPTE MBER 30, 1985

Michigan that he first ran for a public office, th e Ann Arbor City Council, and lost . "He took a great deal of abu se in those days," observed his close friend , Dr. J ordan . "He would be heckled from the audience when giving a speech against the dangers of Communism. Initiall y, he did not respond well to this kind of abu se. The abuse he received in most of his career, even when he went to Congress, was unreal. I don't think people realized th e degree of abuse and outright hate he was exposed to beginning as far back as 1962-63. But in the last decade of his life, when his powers were developed at their fullest , he demonstrated an ability to handle whatever came along. His enemies and detractors were , in fact, frustrated by his ability to handle hims elf in any public situation. He could just overwhelm anyone with his vast knowledge of a subject, and his appearance and genuinely gentleman-like manner were a combination that made him invincible."

Meeting-of-the-Minds Marriage Larry McDonald 's political activities

when he returned from Michigan , combined with a medical practice with his father and brother, were what eventually led to a divorce from his wife. It was in 1975, when he was in California giving a speech a year afte r his election to Congress , that he met Kathryn J ackson. She had worked with man y politician s in Californ ia and came to dislike them as a breed because th ey seemed to stand for everything and , therefore, for nothing. "He was definitely my knight , my gladiator," Mrs. McDonald said after Larry's murd er , "and he came char ging out to California in November 1975. I told him I didn 't date poli tician s a nd just as quickly he said: 'Will you make an exception?' "He followed me to the hotel bar - he didn't drink or was seldom even in a bar - after his speech and came right to the tabl e where I was sitting with two other ladies who had come ju st to hear Larry because he was so handsome and single. He came right up to th e tabl e and asked, 'Pa rdon me, may I join you?' I sai d, 'No! I am just leaving,' and th e other two girls could have killed me. But he sat down

and talked; we talk ed about books; we t a lked abo ut hi st ory; a nd he nea rl y missed his plane. He talked about wha t the ancient Roman Senate did to the empire because its members lacked prin cipIe. He ta lked also about elected officials who, lacking honor and convictions and a willingness to take a stand to save their count ry, are doomed to defeat." Kathryn J ackson was beaut iful - and she had bra ins. They were married in June of 1976. They had two children, Lawr en ce Patton McDonald , Jr. , and Lauren Aileen McDona ld, two years old and eight mon th s re sp ecti vely, when th eir fath er was murd ered. In th e congressional re-election campaigns, th e young couple conferred a certain degr ee of gla mou r on th e 7th Congress ional Distri ct of northern Georgia, made up of a mixture of rural fundam entali sts and urb an middl e-class, white-collar Atlan ta subur banites . His supporters ignored both the Atlanta media's constan t attacks on the Congressman and their attempts to make him out to be a representative of rich, siniste r, out -of-state interests who funded and

"When Larry got something into his mind that he wanted to do, he did it," related his mother.

TH E NEW AM ERI CAN / SE PT E MBE R 30 , 1985

41

controlled an equally sinister group , The John Birch Society. "His personal magnetism allowed him to swing a number of voters to his side who didn 't always agree with him ," Dr. Jordan noted, "joining about 30 to 35 percent of the district that made up his political base that did not agree with him. Opponents knew that taking on Larry in a head-to-head confrontation meant being destroyed. His political enemies in the news media in Atlanta and in Georgia's regular Democratic organization feared him less for his views than his effectiveness, his charismatic personality, his intelligence, and his overwhelming knowledge . This infuriated the Atlanta media, because no one was supposed to know things as well as they did. And when he could overcome their knowledge , it was infuriating because he was on the other side; they could have tolerated him if he had been one of them."

A Charismatic Conservative
According to his brother, Larry MeDonald never had much patience with people whose interests centered on pastimes like football while the country and the world , as he thought, were rushing toward their destruction. Paradoxically, "In his district," brother Harold said, "Larry got along great with people who worked in a factory. He'd go into a factory and find that those people had a kindred feeling for him." Larry McDonald's foreign affairs advisor, Hilaire du Berrier, may have provided the key to his appeal. "Larry was a comer," he wrote. "All the things which he had said and for which the American press had sneered at him were proving valid. He was the most handsome, personable, and most articulate man in the House of Representatives .. . . Among the qualities that make for greatness, he had the rare gift of inspiring confidence in the hearts of those in his presence and he had an indefinable ring of verity in his voice. Above all, he was honest and a patriot." Tommy Toles, his press aide and director of staff affairs in the 7th District, thought of him as the most honorable and loyal person he had known. Toles, a veteran Georgia newspaperman, could say that about few other men in the
st a t e's public life.

Tommy Toles said , "and was a very forceful individual. One of his greatest assets was his persistence. He never quit. He never gave up. He never slowed down. He was not a person to exercise caution simply because the newspapers criticized him. "I would call Larry McDonald a modern-day Cicero," he added. "There will never be another one like him in our lifetime; he was what novelist Taylor Caldwell called in one of her books a 'Pillar of Iron.' He was the one who stood at the gate and cried forth the warning about the enemy without and within and, like Cicero, he was assassinated." Cicero (106 B.C.-43 B.C.) was a statesman, scholar, lawyer, writer and upholder of republican principles during the civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic. Dr. Jordan believes that the analogy is apt only in that both Cicero and McDonald were proven accurate in their warnings and both were murdered. Cicero was captured, beheaded and his hands were cut off and nailed to the rostrum of the Roman Senate. Dr. Jordan prefers to think of Larry McDonald as more like Nathan Hale (1755-1776), the American War of Independence hero caught spying against the British who before he was hanged uttered the famous words that he regretted he had but one life to lose for his country. His utterance and act of bravery assured him a special spot in the pantheon of American patriots as a young martyr in the cause of
liberty.

have come closest to finding a historical parallel. "The nearest historical comparison I can make to Larry McDonald ," he observed , "is John Randolph of Roanoke [Virginia]. He was like Randolph and many early figures in the American Revolution in that they fought for principle against great odds and were willing to lay down their lives for what they believed in ." John Randolph of Roanoke (17731833) sat in the House of Representatives , and later in the Senate, between 1799 and 1828. Less personable and charismatic than Larry McDonald , he nevertheless represented for 29 years a congressional district in southwestern Virginia where , interestingly, Larry McDonald's mother, Callie Grace Patton, was born and lived until age 12. Mrs. McDonald, who lost both her husband and her son Larry within a six-week period, said that if she had ever pursued her interest in a literary career she would have taken the pen name Grace Randolph. The career of John Randolph of Roanoke in the House , like McDonald's, featured a lonely struggle against the majority who refused to face facts , and those who chose to act out of expediency rather than principle. Randolph was one of the few Southerners who had the courage 35 years before the Civil War to denounce slavery as "a cancer" on the face of the South, and he accurately forecast that a civil war would result if the North or South refused to let the evil institution die by the sheer weight of its own deficiencies . Although a century and a half separated their two congressional careers, Larry McDonald's character most resembles Randolph's as a lonely, principled defender of personal liberty. Both were Southerners , both Constitutionalists, and both were Christian political warriors who died defending with their last breath the idea that the individual is sovereign and answerable ultimately, not to the god of government, but to the God whom both believed governs and guides all things. "He was never afraid to do the unpopular thing," observed his widow Kathryn, "because he was totally secure within
himself. He could dare to he unpopular

A Modern-Day Cicero
"He had great personal charisma,"
42

However , Larry McDonald's religious advisor and close friend , the Rev. Joseph Morecraft III , a biblical scholar, may

and unaccepted, and that didn 't bother him . He was the total gladiator for th e right cause."
THE NEW AMERICAN / SEPTEMBER 30, 1985

IF
-,

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream-and not make dreams your master; If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same: If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breathe a word about your loss: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so .hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!" If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, _Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much: If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son!
RUDYARD KIPLING

-,

THE NEW AMERI CAN / SEPTEMBER 30, 1985

43